My guess is they're short an ungodly number of shares (via offshore accounts), which they thought they would never have to cover (the intention was to kill the stock), and which they looked at as 'shorting against the box' in advance--they'd have the inside take on shares from the next AS increase if necessary...HA!
As for covering now... Can you imagine what would happen to the share price if any real buying volume came in? There is probably more than one of them with a huge short position (JC, DB, Scott Martin, etc.)--the overall size is probably too large for them to see any point in trying to cover (and they never for a minute intended to cover by buying in the open market when they established the short position). Not to mention they now have to assume the feds are watching--if they moved the funds around that would be necessary to cover, or if significant buying comes in from any non-retail market maker--Busted!
When the whole story can finally be determined and told,...it ought to be quite a tale....
